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"Generation X" was originally coined to describe people now considered Late Boomers, from 1953 to 1963. They're in their 50s now. Personally, I'd place "X" at 1

"Generation X" was originally coined to describe people now considered Late Boomers, from 1953 to 1963. They're in their 50s now. Personally, I'd place "X" at 1957-1982 with fuzzy edges. (Steve Jobs was half Boomer, half X; I am half X, half Millennial.) If you could be high and unwashed at Woodstock in 1969 and be in upper management at a major company in 1973, you're a Boomer. If you had to work your ass of from age 15 to get anywhere, you're X or later. I would argue that "X" hasn't ended. I was born in 1983 and I don't feel much of a generational separation between myself (1983) and people 10 years older. But I think there's a huge separation between people born in 1945 vs. '55, and also '55 vs. '65. This came into the clear at my wedding, when I could sense "generational sameness" in conversations among people of radically different ages (from 3 to 84). I feel like I'm "the same age" as people who are 23 (18's different, but that's because of inexperience) or 38, but age 55 and 65 are (generationally speaking) very different, even now. My favorite shows are Mad Men and Breaking Bad. It's best to watch them both. They're eros and thanatos, the bookends of the American Era. I think the "X" distinction is about coming of age in what I call Tidal Crisis, which started around 1970 and never ended. Things aren't getting worse-- on average, taking a global perspective, even the 2000s was a great decade-- but progress is uneven and separations are becoming vast. It's a national morale crisis that threatens (IMO) the existence of the U.S. as a cohesive entity. We have pockets of underemployment and clusters of overemployment, and I don't need to say anything about the rich-poor gap that's now tearing the country apart. That's the backdrop for X. But there's also an internal component, which is about having the courage and passion to do the right thing anyway, in spite of a damaged environment. This is why Gen X produced great artists and also (I think) why so many of them are great parents.

dpark 15y ago
> If you had to work your ass of from age 15 to get anywhere, you're X or later. You can't be serious. Most of the Xers and (especially) later didn't work their asses off. They worked at the grocery store in high school, not to help support their families, but to pay for gas in vehicles that they didn't really need that their parents bought them. We're two spoiled generations. > I would argue that "X" hasn't ended. I was born in 1983 and I don't feel much of a generational separation between myself (1983) and people 10 years older. But I think there's a huge separation between people born in 1945 vs. '55, and also '55 vs. '65. This came into the clear at my wedding, when I could sense "generational sameness" in conversations among people of radically different ages (from 3 to 84). I feel like I'm "the same age" as people who are 23 (18's different, but that's because of inexperience) or 38, but age 55 and 65 are (generationally speaking) very different, even now. That's because you're in the middle of that age range. When you're around 30, someone 10 years older isn't really in a drastically different place in life. They work jobs, they have kids at home, they live in fairly nice houses (they might even still be paying student loans). Day to day there's very little different. Ditto for 23-year-olds. They are out of college and working a job, a few of them are having kids. They're at an earlier level of career development, but not by that much. You were there very recently. On the other hand, you look at 18-year-olds and they seem stupid, because they are (so were we at that age). And they're just starting college. You can't really relate to that any more. You look at 50-year-olds, and they've got kids in college. And they're managers at work now. And the age gap is large enough that it doesn't disappear into the background. But there is no real generational divide. It's a continuum. Sure, you feel like you can relate to 23-year-olds and 40-year-olds. You could date someone in either of those age buckets and it's not really weird. The 40-year-old probably feels a lot more "generational divide" talking to a 23-year-old than you do. The 40-year-old could be the parent of the 23-year-old.

dpark 15y ago

> If you had to work your ass of from age 15 to get anywhere, you're X or later. You can't be serious. Most of the Xers and (especially) later didn't work their asses off. They worked at the grocery store in high school, not to help support their families, but to pay for gas in vehicles that they didn't really need that their parents bought them. We're two spoiled generations. > I would argue that "X" hasn't ended. I was born in 1983 and I don't feel much of a generational separation between myself (1983) and people 10 years older. But I think there's a huge separation between people born in 1945 vs. '55, and also '55 vs. '65. This came into the clear at my wedding, when I could sense "generational sameness" in conversations among people of radically different ages (from 3 to 84). I feel like I'm "the same age" as people who are 23 (18's different, but that's because of inexperience) or 38, but age 55 and 65 are (generationally speaking) very different, even now. That's because you're in the middle of that age range. When you're around 30, someone 10 years older isn't really in a drastically different place in life. They work jobs, they have kids at home, they live in fairly nice houses (they might even still be paying student loans). Day to day there's very little different. Ditto for 23-year-olds. They are out of college and working a job, a few of them are having kids. They're at an earlier level of career development, but not by that much. You were there very recently. On the other hand, you look at 18-year-olds and they seem stupid, because they are (so were we at that age). And they're just starting college. You can't really relate to that any more. You look at 50-year-olds, and they've got kids in college. And they're managers at work now. And the age gap is large enough that it doesn't disappear into the background. But there is no real generational divide. It's a continuum. Sure, you feel like you can relate to 23-year-olds and 40-year-olds. You could date someone in either of those age buckets and it's not really weird. The 40-year-old probably feels a lot more "generational divide" talking to a 23-year-old than you do. The 40-year-old could be the parent of the 23-year-old.